Church Street Re-Born
Downtown’s Timeless and Stately Corridor
Church Street 1937 & Church Street 2005
Nashville’s historic Church Street has always changed with the times. Its humble beginnings were as a dirt path in the 1780s, eventually named “Spring Street” due to a spring that ran through the middle of it. Over the years churches were built on the street – including a Methodist church, a Baptist church, the Presbyterian Church, McKendree Church and Christ Church – and people began calling it “Church Street.”
In 1928, the Knickerbocker movie house, located on Church Street, showed the city’s first movie with sound. During the Great Depression and World War II, the street was the main avenue of retail business.
At one time Church Street was a two-way street with a trolley running down the middle. Metro spent $1.5 million in 1976 to convert it to one-way traffic, shape it into a serpentine pattern and pave it with hexagonal bricks.
Nearly 30 years later, Church Street has been restored to its original status as a main traffic corridor and pedestrian destination for downtown Nashville.
In November 2005, Metro Public Works completed a 13-month, $7 million Streetscape project that straightened the serpentine design, provided new sidewalks and landscaping, benches, light and signal poles, and changed traffic back to two-way.